Doctoral Dissertation Research: Return Migration and Linguistic Interaction

该奖项支持的研究采用语言人类学的方法来调查自愿返回移民的融合，作为一个透镜，通过它可以更好地了解当代民族国家。回返移徙者是移民返回祖国的散居国外者。在那里，他们并不总是容易被同化，尽管他们与当地居民有着共同的语言和文化历史。因此，返回的移民挑战了边界、国家和公民身份的常识观念。鉴于当今世界人口的全球流动性增加，了解返回的移民为何以及如何与他们返回的社会保持分离以及这种情况是否可以补救是很重要的。这项研究将由德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校人类学博士生汉娜·福斯特在安东尼·韦伯斯特博士的指导下进行。研究人员选择研究哈萨克斯坦Qaraghandy的哈萨克移民返回情况，该城市近年来接收了大批返回移民。由于返回者可能来自哈萨克斯坦政府关系不稳定的国家，这些返回的哈萨克人一直是政府关注和特别方案的对象。这使得这是一个富有成效的研究网站，研究返回移民融合。研究人员将把她的数据收集集中在一个特殊的融合中心，在那里移民学习俄语并获得服务。先前的研究表明，这些互动可能是通过使用多种语言来介导的，并通过与他们离开的散居社区的联系来塑造，从而创建复杂的通信网络。研究者将结合语言学和人种学方法收集数据，包括参与者观察，记录自然发生的话语，匹配伪装实验，反馈访谈和叙事分析。本研究的发现将有助于我们对回归移民过程与维护民族国家稳定的关系有新的认识。研究结果也将与有关政策制定者分享，以改善移民的生活以及他们的社会，政治和文化融合。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The research supported by this award uses a linguistic anthropological approach to investigate the integration of voluntary return migrants as a lens through which to better understand the contemporary nation state. Return migrants are members of the diaspora who migrate back to their homeland. There they are not always easily assimilated, even though they share a language and cultural history with local residents. Thus, return migrants challenge common sense ideas of borders, nation, and citizenship. Given the increased global mobility of the world's populations today, it is important to understand why and how return migrants remain apart from the society they have returned to and whether or not this situation can be remedied.The research will be conducted by University of Texas at Austin anthropology doctoral student Hannah Foster, with guidance from Dr. Anthony Webster. The researcher has chosen to study the situation of return Kazakh migrants in Qaraghandy, Kazakhstan, a city that has received large waves of return migrants in recent years. Because the returnees may come from countries with which the Kazakhstan government has uneasy relationships, these return Kazakhs have been the object of governmental attention and special programs. This makes this a productive research site for studying return immigrant integration. The researcher will focus her data collection on a special integration center where the migrants learn Russian and get access to services. Prior research has demonstrated that these interactions may be mediated by the use of multiple languages and shaped by connections back to the diasporic community they left, creating complex communication networks. The researcher will collect data with a combination of linguistic and ethnographic methods including participant observation, recording naturally occurring discourse, matched-guise experiments, feedback interviews, and narrative analysis. Findings from this research will produce new understandings of the return migration processes in relation to maintaining the stability of the nation state. The findings will also be shared with policy makers concerned to improve the lives of the immigrants as well as their social, political, and cultural integration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.